I tried to contact some organisers to get a list of other items they might need, and got absolutely no response, no one would talk to me. It was like now they had my donation I had ceased to exist.

So I wrote that I would cease all publicising of OccSyd events, if they wanted to act like me and my donation had ceased to exist, I would return the favour, and I would treat them as the joke that they are.

In my experience, I believe #OccupySydney to be frauds, thieves and multi-level-marketers conniving to get goods out of working people… it was only at this point that I had contact on twitter.

Clearly OCCUPY are quite happy to accept a uteload of goods, including blankets, a generator, and computer equipment, but Im not good enough to talk to, wow, talk about elitist.

I told the person representing @OccupySYDNEY that I wish they would leave me alone, and I would stop mentioning them either negatively or positively, but I wanted them to stop talking to me.

And I got bombarded with patronising tweets, about how the “convergence” this and “intention” that and “facilitate” something else.

Using them big ole fancy words you learn in your posh schools is absolutely the way to show solidarity with us peasants, ey?

Of course, they denied receiving my goods. Even though it was arranged via the Facebook group. …. So either the twitter account is monitored by frauds or the facebook group is monitored by frauds, either way, I made a donation of about $1000 worth of goods collected from my local community and they deny they have it, so how much of that will end up at the local pawn-shop or in someones back room. My advice, stay safe and give #occupySydney a very width path.

@occupysydney did say “sorry-we honestly don’t know who you dropped that off to..& are VERY concerned”

@redglitterx sorry-we honestly don't know who you dropped that off to..& are VERY concerned- we have no-one in Ultimo though

They are sooooo concerned that they have yet to ask me any question about where I went, who I dropped my goods off to, what were they names, their appearance, phone numbers, vehicle licence plate numbers, in fact they are SOOOO concerned they haven’t asked me even a single thing about this incident.

This leads me to infer / assume that they know exactly who those people were …. remember the OJ Simpson murder trial, the Defence lawyers forgot to try and locate the “real” owner of the bloody glove, because they already knew.

Because without a doubt, if someone was using my name to con about $1000 worth of goods out of someone, and who knows, there might be more, I would ask a question or two -unless I already knew who the bloody glove belonged to.

So how does this go again – you expect people to give you stuff, but you refuse to answer their questions – hey, they have been learning from the 1% how to be complete, capitalist, blood sucking, elitists.

Do I feel cheated? Mostly of any good will I had towards the occupation, most of the goods had been donated from people in my small country town, I feel bad that somehow I unwittingly deceived them. I bought some vegan food, and spent about 9 hours driving and bought petrol, but that was a small outlay.

Do I feel disappointed? Meh, I never had high expectations in the first place, this just proves my initial scepticism was not entirely misplaced.

Seriously, if you are ignoring the question – what else do you need and I will collect it for you?, then perhaps you dont really need any more stuff.

But I did get told by someone who I didnt realise was connected with the occupy, if they are at all, that if I have more supplies to donate to call a certain number, yep cos that has been so successful up til now.

I have not seen any evidence that anyone knows what they are doing (‘were leaderless, no one is in charge, now make a donation and youll feel better’)

and I dont need anyone to say Im just being a little whiny bitch, because when I asked, what do you need?, I dont even get someone sending me a link to a list of supplies they would like.

So, I am putting this word of warning out there, people can use my experience to give them more information in order to make more informed decisions

In My Opinion – I would caution everyone who is thinking of getting involved with #occupy sydney, Australia, to seriously think twice:

– think really hard about donating goods unless you personally know the person who is collecting them, and you know for a fact they will be occupying

– think twice before donating anything that can be onsold, especially electronics or new clothes

– think twice before turning up to occupy, you might just be there as background to legitimise the event so that the “organisers” can continue collect donations

– think twice before you publicise events, if they are a scam, do you really want to be promoting that?

– think twice before retweeting, reposting or reblogging anything that gives them any more publicity

If anyone would like to dispute what I have to say, or ask me any questions about who the people were that I delivered my goods to, like their name or address, leave a comment.

For anyone who doesn’t know Sydney – Baulkham Hills is one of the Richest areas in Australia, it also has one of the lowest levels of unemployment, it is also politically one of the safest LiberalNational seats (in Australian “Liberal” is the party of right-wing, neo-cons) – which just reinforces my original belief, #OCCUPYSYDNEY is a scam, by the same demographic that most occupiers want to protest against.

[Edited to Add: perhaps I should say alleged scammers are allegedly using alleged occupysydney to allegedly get free stuff, but really, I dont have any proof of that.

Sometime later, I was contacted by someone via twitter, using the “official” @occupysydney account, I asked them repeatedly to leave me alone, and they refused, the harassment continued quite a few hours later, from both the “official” account, and one of the private accounts ( @lala_dolce_vita ) of one of the occupy elites. The trolling and insults kept up for about half an hour, “were just trying to help” she pouted.

(Um, would you like the address where I took the goods to? Nope.
Would you like to tweet from the official account a request for information from your followers? yep, apparently that is “help”.
Don’t you care that perhaps someone in your organisation, took these for themselves? nope.)

After a few insulting trolly tweets, she told me that the main account must have been hacked. Yep must have been. Of course, it is so obvious, they got hacked just long enough to send nasty patronising harassing tweets, and then apparently they got unhacked.
Oh please, blaming a “hacker” for your own actions is childish, take responsibility.

I will say it again: The whole #occupysydney farce is a sham, a scam, an elistist money making Multi-level-marketing scheme designed to increase the personal wealth of a few “organisers”,
If you are #occupysydney and think you have been defamed, take it to court, prove it.

And for anyone thinking of donating – ask yourself – do they really need your money? do you have so much money lying around that you can afford to just give it away to people whose sole contribution to this movement is sending a few tweets and a few facebook status updates?]

Interrupting our series on Vegan Bootcamp: 101 days of Animal Rights Activism, with a little detour
– to alert the AR community of a divisive agent of state repression who is currently operating under the guise of Animal Rights Blogger.

And just who is this lowest of the low? This scum of the earth, this running dog of imperialism, this state collaborating, disciple of Francione, Orwellian nightmare? . . . . Apparently it would me.

As the old saying goes – why am I always the last to know!

And exactly what was my crime, that made me such a divisive enemy of Animal Rights and agent of state repression, Orwellian nightmare and Francione disciple?

well, simply, I pointed out, and quite correctly, that a blogger (Steven Best, who many people have told me is required reading to be a real animal rights activist) had blatantly, I repeat BLATANTLY, plagiarised a 2003 BBC webpost.

But apparently plagiarism is completely acceptable if you are famous.

Or, if you are ripping off the British.

Or something that is more than five years old.

A thorough look at the stats on this blog post that he apparently keeps stumbling over every where he goes – was viewed by 5 people in all of february and 12 on 12 April. (I would suggest that a large portion of those statistics is Best himself, when he left a comment).

And if 17 people viewing this post is going to be such a divisive influence on AR – then AR is HUGE trouble. Huge. Big.

This is the accusations against me:

I keep stumbling on this absurd and divisive blog post, with posts by others still i do not even know personally, and a few perhaps Francione disciples exploiting this “scandal” for its full Owellian, hate-fest potential.

I am going to ask you to kindly remove it, because it serves no purpose, it erroneous and slanderous, and also somewhat comical when you learn the truth of this egregious (!!) scholarly fallacy and breakdown, which is: I posted it to FB with full credits to the BBC, not too hard to do; someone posted it to my blog, not me, and they forgot to add the BBC link up front with the full credits and by-line.

That’s it! That’s all that happened, and yet this is worth venemous posts bouncing around the net and even Twitter, denigrating 30 years of scholarly work and publications, based on something I myself never posted, and which was nothing but a referencing oversight and typo. Pretty clear where the real flaws and flawed ones are in this movement. Try to get a sense of priority folks: there is a holocaust and ecological .rapidly unfolding, other small items such as those marginalia.

You had the information you needed thanks to the person who showed you the FB version of this to know it was a fabricated or non-story, and yet you ran with it, and kept it in the glaring light of defamy on this page.

Enough already, no? Remove this blog and every other one replicating the same innane, baseless claims, if someone had just come to ask me, it could have been corrected and put to rest before the proverbial tempest in the teapot.

We don’t need state repression and corporate power to destruction the animal liberation cause, this is symptomatic of how well a job the “enlightened activists” do all on their own.

Thank you.

Or is not really plagiarism if you attribute it some other place? It seems so.

Mr Best had written on his WordPress blog the 2003 BBC article in question, which was copied WORD-FOR-WORD, this was apparently attributed on his facebook page.

I say apparently, not to dispute his claims, but because there was no link on his blog, no mention of click this for more information, no “source found here”, no directing readers to facebook for more information. So whether there was a correct attribution on his facebook page, readers of his blog that are not members of his special friends on facebook club would actually have absolutely NO WAY to find this out for themselves.

For the 6.999990 billion people on the planet who do not follow Mr Best, I am not really sure how the rest of are suppose to see that proper credit.

Ah but as he points out, a commenter on my original blog about it, had alerted me to the fact that it had been attributed on his facebook page. And I replied at the time – I do not follow him.

But strangely, even bizarrely perhaps, in my country, people only comment on blog posts AFTER they have been published. To say that I was corrected – as to where the actual attribution was – by a comment on the blog piece as a reason for NOT publishing, I’m not quite sure I understand. The laws of physics as they apply to me, is that time moves forward.

And, under Newton’s Third Law of Thermodynamics, which is sometimes known as the action-reaction law, for there to be a reaction (ie, in this case, a comment on the blog) there has to be an action (ie, a blog).

I obey the laws of physics, so I can’t really not have published something in the first place, based on information that comes in as a result of posting it. You see what I’m getting at?

Now, I know that I don’t teach at university like Mr Best, (if he doesn’t teach at a university, mea culpa, I could not be interested enough to read his wiki page) and my students are only in highschool, but if a student of mine handed in an assignment which was copied word for word from someone else, but attributed it correctly in the assignment for another class, I am almost sure that I would not give them a pass mark.

The reasons for his blog post having all the distinguishing features of a lack of attribution is a) it was attributed some place completely separate and accessible to only a handful of people with Mr Bests permission (accepting a friend request) and 2) even if there was no attribution, that is okay too because even though it is his name on the blog, he didn’t post the post, and c) whether he looked at what was posted by someone else on his personal blog, under his personal name later on and noticed there was no attribution, that was not attributed at the time I took the screen caps, is unknown to me – but this is all sounding a bit like a dog ate my homework.

As Mr Best tells me “remove this blog post”, um, I’m not really sure that advocating censorship of those who point out what appears at first glance to be a case of “homage with lack of attribution” is quite up there with campaigning against repression, (that is against for those who missed it), not advocating for.

Pointing out a lack of credit is Orwellian, repressive and defamy, yet demanding I remove it, is un-repression.

I think you and me, Mr Best have two very different dictionaries, because mine doesn’t say anything about censorship being just like freedom and liberation.

and while I’m at it – Heaven forbid someone in AR has a different opinion to someone else, lest they be accused of divisiveness.

The accusation of divisiveness, I have found, is generally leveled against those who disagree with us, regardless of whether they in fact are divisive or not. Accusations like like are used as a means to stifle debate or a free exchange of ideas. If we go around accusing everyone who doesn’t worship at our feet of being divisive, then we are going to find that the next generation of ARAs are obedient unquestioning automatons who are unable to think for themselves because divisiveness is seen as a negative and conformity is encouraged. It’s also a good way to get people who don’t agree with you to shut the hell up, or maybe stand up to bullies who use censorship to silence dissent.

You, Mr Best are a US American, right? Land of the free, Home of the baseball, and first amendment free speech and all that?

Or does free speech not apply when people point out that posts are exact replicas of a 2003 BBC post – I must have missed the day that the US Supreme Court (or whoever) amended that little constitutional guarantee for United States Americans, “free speech for all, except for those who correctly identify instances of copy and paste without credit by famous people”.

And as for calling me a Francione disciple – um, only if that helps you sleep better at night, to believe that everyone who disagrees with you must be a “disciple” of Mr Francione. Because apparently only people who are a – what was that insult Francione disciple in other words – One who embraces and assists in spreading the teachings of G Francione – could possible find plagiarism noteworthy.

And has been said about Mr Francione – by… oh honestly who gives a damn who said it first, it may even have been you, but attributing sources is so repressive, so let’s just skip over that: “The Guru and his disciples come together in a dance of doctrine and dogma. Like Christian fundamentalists, Francione and his followers believe they possess the Truth …”

and if anyone would like to know who said that, the attribution is on my facebook page, besides, just because someone put a bunch of words together in a particular order why should that mean no else is entitled to use those exact same words in the exact same order – talk about repressive copyright. No, seriously, putting a credit on a bunch of words that is borrowed from someone else really is complete and utter fascism at it most basic.

And you know, Mr Best, for you to desire accuracy, when, oh I don’t know, someone, has said that only Francione disciples believe they possess the truth, would kind of suggest that I’m not the only “Francione disciple” in this conversation … because well, let’s face it, no one else desires “the Truth” (attribution: who gives a damn) do they.

I have never really thought the whole Truth thing was exclusive to Francione disciples, but there you go, learn something new every day.

Seeking accuracy is so oppressive. Having to write a credit on something is such an Orwellian nightmare. And pointing out the obvious is absurd.

What frightening times we live in, indeed.

Copyright is theft, its implying that someone can own a word-order, and once you start owning word-orders it’s just a hop-skip-and-jump from speciesism. So, yes, Mr Best, I am beginning to see your point – owning a piece of work as an author is repression of the highest order, and compare that to owning animals, they are so similar. Don’t know why I failed to see it so clearly before.

And as you point out, Mr Best there is a holocaust going on – not just against the billions of animals in the world slaughtered daily, but also against billions of words, trapped for ever in books and webpages. Owned! Its lexical slavery! It is intolerable.

Set my language free!

We will not have total liberation until all words are free.

But hey, let all vegans and ARs copy and paste without credit as much as they desire, let us all ignore that pesky little thing known as copyright, because we are all perfect. And apparently to point out that someone might have had an entire article published on their blog, under their own name, but actually taken from a BBC website by someone who is not them is being divisive.

What a ridiculous accusation.

Almost as ridiculous of calling it “absurd” to highlight that a 2011 blog post was in fact a 2003 blog post from the BBC.

I kind of have a little trouble accepting that plagiarism is so inconsequential that to point it out is “absurd”. Even more absurd is to suggest that only Francione disciples would care about proper credit for the author of a piece of written text. Because adding “BY THE BBC” is conformity and repression.

And I guess, that knowing all this, and that you think giving credit where it belongs is absurd and repressive, you, Mr Best would have no problem with anyone else in the entire world copying and pasting something you wrote and pasting it on their own personal blog, as long it is attributed correctly in, oh, some completely separate location? Is that fair to say?

And as for removing it, and every other one replicating the same innane, baseless claims, if it baseless, I would remove it, but it isn’t. And, if it has been replicated, all over the net, then perhaps it is a case of someone taking it without my knowledge, which, doesn’t seem to be plagiarism or copyright or anything, so let people take my words. I have no more power over them, or claim to control them, once they are posted as, apparently, the BBC has over their words once they are published.

And if calling someone out – and completely accurately – for not attributing a blog post which was borrowed word for word is “DEFAMY” (attribution: S Best, because I like to give credit where it is due, I refuse to own that spelling mistake) then, your response is just as inaccurate, yawn-inducing, ludicrous, ridiculous, insulting, divisive and defamy.

Although, Mr Best, lets you and me talk about DEFAMY – since English is not my first language, and since Google translate didn’t really tell me what DEFAMY actually means for those of us struggling with English, I am going to assume you mean, defamation, or defamed, maybe defaming, perhaps defamatory, or just plain old ordinary defame

Although perhaps your response was a fraction more “DEFAMY” (attribution: S Best) because where mine was accurate – there was absolutely No BBC credit on the blog post, NONE, ZERO, ZILCH, शून्य and no link to a credit on the facebook page – whereas, calling me a Francione disciple is actually inaccurate.

And I know how much of a perfectionist you are when it comes to accuracy, well, apparently except where blog posts on your own blog are concerned.

As an ordained clergy person, to suggest that I am a disciple of another, a mortal, damages my reputation, and my immortal soul, not just on this earth but in other realms, for now and eternity, as much as the suggestion that a vegan is meat-eater or wears silk.

And while I can’t claim to be an expert on the laws of “DEFAMY” (attribution: S Best) as they apply in the USA, I do know that where I am, the laws of defamation are based on threestandards
one – are they true? and what you said about me IS NOT,
b) are they believable, YES it MIGHT be, and
third: are they likely to damage my reputation in the eyes of at least one other person, I believe that you use the phrase “Francione disciple” in a derogatory way with the sole intent to damage my reputation, and according to EFF: “any individual or entity who considers damage to their reputation has or is likely to occur, as a result of material published, may sue the publisher/s of the material.”

Whether or not I believe the words “Francione disciple” (attribution: S Best) to be a description that damages my reputation is irrelevant, what matters is that someone else might believe it and therefore damages my reputation.

A quick look at my past posts would show that I spend as much time pointing out where I disagree with Francione as I do agreeing with him, which could in no way be mistaken for being a “Francione disciple”, where as the accuracy my comment, that your blog post had no credit, is easy to judge, one only has to look.

The following, are defences of “DEFAMY” (attribution: S Best) in my jurisdiction:
Defences that may be successfully pleaded in relation to a defamation action vary throughout Australian jurisdictions. Depending on the jurisdiction, these may include:

* truth/justification
* fair comment (e.g. an expression of an honestly held opinion or a criticism on a subject matter of public interest)
* absolute privilege (this attaches to the occasion, not the statement or speaker, such as during parliamentary proceedings, judicial and quasi-judicial proceedings, executive communications and communications between spouses)
* qualified privilege (e.g. fair and accurate reports of parliamentary proceedings, judicial proceedings, public meetings concerning matters of public interest/concern)
* consent (e.g. where the plaintiff expressly or impliedly consented to the publication of the particular imputation)
* triviality (e.g. where the circumstances/occasion of the publication were trivial to the extent that the person defamed was not likely to suffer harm)
* innocent dissemination (e.g. applicable to re-publishers/re-distributors such as newsagents/book sellers, including potentially to ISPs/ICHs. The defence in Clause 91 of the BSA is also relevant to ISPs/ICHs.)
* etcSource: because I attribute words that I copy and past from someone else EFF

BTW: I know that I said I would happily remove it, but I retracted that on my facebook page, you didn’t see that? I mean, that is the way blogging works, right, you can say something on facebook to qualify what is written in a blog, right?

So, if any part of this is inaccurate, that is because the really, truly accurate version of events is on my facebook page, which there is no excuse for anyone and everyone not seeing.

And, before anyone directs any hate mail towards me, or accuses me of being an Orwellian, divisive, repressive, Francione disciple if meant as an insult, or whatever, let’s just say the whole thing was copy / pasted from … oh, who knows, some place else… I just chose to not attribute it, because it makes me seem so much smarter to not attribute work that was written by someone else.

There is no copyright on this, because apparently owning your own words is oppressive and repressive and Francionish and Orwellian. So I’m taking these words out in the wild and releasing them . . .

Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, words are free at last. (which I just invented, so no attribution required)

The profile picture he tends to favour most often is a generic image of a 2009 Suzuki GSX R1000 K9,
if you see this image on any save the seals / Animal Rights social media accounts and the person is not talking about motorbikes, proceed with caution

One of the best blogs that go into great detail, with lots of research is SpookieCats

the exact same Negotiation Is Over post is reproduced here “Cyber Stalking by Michael McDade (Seal Shepherd)
(Btw, Ann Berlin, completely off topic, but since Ive had to put up with your abuse before and hope to reference you as little as possible, Im taking this opportunity to say that defending the use of animal products, such as butter, even if it is by the real Sea Shepherd doesn’t make it vegan, regardless of how many whales Sea Shepherd saves, And how different is your claim to be “Animal Liberation Front Worldwide news and information resource” any different from McDade’s claim to be the boss of ALF in Canada?)

Because I believe “there are no stupid questions, it’s those who don’t ask that remain stupid”.

So, what is it that people ask me – not of vegans in general, I’m sure other vegans get asked different questions.

Which animal rights advocates to follow on twitter?

Depends what kind of animal rights you are into – if you are abolitionist, they generally have “abolitionist” in their bio. If you are Liberationist maybe look for specific people. Search for the hashtag #vegan or #AnimalRights and you will find people you want to follow.

People who have forums, blogs, nings or facebuck sometimes include their twitter @name, if you find a blog you like, look for that.

But, isn’t animal testing necessary for beauty products?

Beauty products that test on animals are not beautiful.

It is NOT necessary. Why they test is because they are using combinations of chemicals that might cause death, disfigurement, and long lasting health side-effects. These chemicals enter the blood stream and nobody knows what effect they will have on the body. Do we even know that BSE (mad cow disease) can’t be spread via cosmetics?

Now, isn’t it better to use healthy ingredients in the first place than take the risk with these dangerous products that “only” kill 50% of the lab rats they test on.

Abolitionists talk about Non-violence being the only way to end animal cruelty, but doesn’t Noam Chomsky say that non-violence cannot work?

I’m generally reluctant to mention Nazis but Noam Chomksy said it first:

Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence. That’s pretty obvious. You can’t have non-violent resistance against the Nazis in a concentration camp, to take an extreme case…The Real History of Capitalism

What are some veggie symbols?

I don’t know what “Veggie” means. Seriously, I don’t.
Does it mean Vegan or does it mean Vegetarian? Is it meant to be a combination of both?
Does it mean “vegetable”? I’m in Australia, we spell it “vegie”.
This Ⓥ is a symbol some vegans use on social network sites.

Is Carrot cake Vegan?

It should be, yes.
But people will always find a way to shove animal products into any food. However, it does contain oil instead of eggs, and is not low fat, but is vegan.
This recipe contains fruits and vegetable, and is very easy to make, and non-vegans will love it, I mean, if they like carrot cake:

Camille Marino / Steve Best

Wow, there is a lot of interest in these two. And often people are interested in CamilleMarinoAndSteveBest, as if it is one word, almost like they have morphed into one person with one brain. But no, they appear to be two separate people.

Their use of a match as their symbol is problematic for me, since matches are an animal product, but no more problematic than PeTA using naked women and leather-wearing celebrities.

Do you need to follow their every word in order to be a good little MDA (Militant Direct Action) activist?
That’s a personal choice. Some people say NO.

who is the woman in Moby’s “disco lies” video?

Shayna Steele, who also provided the female vocals. This is the video in which the chicken gets revenge on a KFC-inspired Colonel.

Benjamin Zephaniah

Who is Benjamin Zephaniah, and where can I find a copy of his poem “Vegan Delight“?
Zephaniah is a British poet who has written and spoken about veganism. Some of his work is featured in this post on him Vegan Delight, Benjamin Zephaniah (plus vegan onion bhajji recipe).

Vegan Delight (and not Onion Delight) – is a poem that answers the question “What do vegans eat?”. When omnivores say that all vegans eat is tofu and broccoli, this poem would set them straight. With the exception of “omelettes” – I don’t know why that is listed in the poem.

But what happens when schools start telling people “drink milk as often as you can”? And that message is brought directly to the students via a Dairy Lobby Group and a Government Department.
How can this be anything but propaganda for AA (Animal Agriculture)?

And if anyone still has doubts about the evilness of Dairy – a Land O Lakes subsidiary has poured millions of dollars into Monsanto, “that shady agro-giant, that food-world Voldemort” (Elizabeth Farrelly), owning the world – one gene at a time.

Ask Your Doctor About Meat™
A brilliant, humorous look at propaganda of meat eating coming from “experts” who know nothing about nutrition (doctors receive very little training in nutrition).
“Meat… It’s dead and it’s made from animals”

Vegany Sweet Goodness

This recipe for Vegan chocolate bars inspired by Mars® Bars
because – not only are Mars® Bars filled with cruelty ingredients, but Mars tests on animals .
A Mars France spokesperson has “admitted that the business division Symbioscience does test on animals while developing “pharmaceutical and therapeutic food ingredients”, including flavanols.”

Image via Wikipedia

Vegan Mars Bars from Veganarchy Foods
*nuttelex in the recipe is vegan margarine

Which may not seem like anything until followers realise, (and this is what I find amusingly ironic) this same person, he/she was calling out progressives for labeling Ann Coulter a “he/she”. And this @sarrabee person thought that was transphobic. And yet, turns around and uses transphobic terms as an insult against others.

If you don’t know someone’s gender, and it is important to you, as it seems to be for this @sarrabee transgender hater person, then use someone’s name. Or, gender neutral “them”, “their”, “they”, which is becoming increasingly acceptable to use for singular other.

Although, I’m not sure why someone’s gender should be important to anyone other than that persons loved ones and doctor.

In the above tweet, she/he could have said “I’m reposting THEIR tweets” – but his/her insistence on use a gender descriptor for the person he/she was reposting, seems to me that she/he (@sarrabee) cares a lot about gender and calling out progressives and doesn’t really care about transgender people at all.

This person comes across as a twitter troll – follow at your own risk.

from the Feeding Trolls archives

completely selfish fkn moron of the week

from the Im a selfish, self centre, heartless loser files

This comment (You can be both an animal rights activist and an omnivore. Some people don’t have the need to eat meat but some do.) was found at the Facebook group Fight For Animal Rights.

Let’s go over this one more time for the braindead idiots – one of the most basic rights any living thing has, is LIFE. When you eat meat, or consume any animal product, you are depriving that being of LIFE.

Eating animals is not ANIMAL RIGHTS.

You absolutely CANNOT be an animal rights activist who consumes the corpses of animals.

Great leaders don’t try to build a larger following, they try to build more great leaders.

A lot of what is written here is common knowledge to people who use twitter already, but there are some people who don’t use twitter, yet. When I talk to them they say that knowing how can keep them away, so what may seem like old news to some might be new to others.

What do you want your experience of Twitter to be?
for example: an announcement feed, where you drop in to update followers to a [new blog post]; or build a community, find the people you like talking to everyday, participate in discussions and meet new people; use it as just another piece of multi-media with your other social networks, or just sit back and read the headlines and inspirational quotes without much interaction.

* If you don’t already have an account, something to consider is to sign up using a free email, such as yahoo or gmail, you will be getting notifications of DM (direct message) and new followers. You can shut off that feature under [settings] -> [notices]. Although, protecting your privacy is something to keep in mind when social networking. If you haven’t signed up under a separate email but wish to, you can change email under [settings]. If you find an organisation or group that you can email subscribe to, it keeps them all in one address.

* If all you want is an announcement account, sign up then stop by when you have a new blog post.

* Next decide if you want a private account or public account. If you want private you will only interact people who you approve. If you want public, your tweets are public to everyone regardless if they are followers or not. Change this in [settings] -> [account]

However, if you want to get a little more out of Twitter, there are some things to think about

* Write a bio, sum yourself up, or the You you wish to project on twitter in 160 characters. If someone visits your page, they can get an idea of who you. Include a few key words, example, vegan, justice, ARA
Maybe add a location, cute locations like ‘your computer’ or ‘the universe’ might be fun at first, and if it is about wanting to protect your privacy, narrow it down to a country, or region ‘West Europe’ or ‘South Pacific’ Bios help make it feel like there is a real person behind the account, not just a spambot.

* Include a profile picture. If you would prefer to not use your face, something that reflects you. An image, slogan, graphic. There are times where people haven’t been able to upload, be patient, a link to your blog can provide a better understanding of who you are.

* If you are not using your real name, choose a great name, that says something about you, veganmama, BettyARA or AnimalLibNYC, and people know a little about you, “hotgirl5678” or “wellhung007” will probably get you marked as spam, or not taken seriously. You can change your username and display name under [settings] -> [account] and [pro file].

* Integrate or not integrate; link your twitter account to facebook, and when you update facebook it also updates your twitter account, (watch for the personal stuff), or you could have a tweet feed on your blog, by adding an RSS. Or have links to your blog, facebook, twitter or other social networks alerting people how to find you in other media and networks, and they can choose to follow you or friend you or subscribe if they wish.
Include a link to your blog in your profile, if people want to know more about you they can visit, and unless your account is just for [new blog post] notifications, post more than just links to your own blog, and RTs of headlines, unless that is what you want. Be consistent in the format NEW BLOG POST or [new blog post] or New Blog Post✰ and your followers will know it is Your blog that has new post. (Personal opinion, Not as many people as I would like say it is their blog that they are linking to when they post tweets.)

* Personalise your page. It is a reflection of you, and gives you another opportunity to get your message out, maybe list your website and contact details as part of your background image. You can change the colours, to something that reflects who you are. But make sure it is readable, having to highlight the text on someone’s page in order to read it because the text is almost the same colour as the background, isn’t fun for your followers or potential followers.

* Consider using a desktop application, looking at the tweets in my feed currently “Tweetdeck” is the most popular, others include, Tweet-U-Later, HootSuite, and SocialOomph. They have different features, including schedule updates, access more than one account, track followers, set up groups, shrink urls, translate, edit ReTweets (RT), email tweets, and permanent word searches, as well as many of things that can be done from Twitter, unfollow or follow users, block, search and view profile.

* Before you try and get thousands of followers, especially if it is a new account, post some tweets, make them say exactly what you people to know about yourself (not a bio, but the sorts of topics you will be tweeting about, example, animal rights, veganism, abolitionism, the environment, links to petitions you support, or famous quotes, even a couple will give the Twitterverse an idea of what you want to say about yourself). There is nothing worse than visiting someone’s profile and they have 0 tweets and no bio.

* Politeness goes a long way. Don’t be nasty, unless that is your thing, but that generally only works for a very few. Be nice, thank people acknowledge them, they mention or RT you. You could send them thank you DMs when they follow you (or set up your desktop application to automatically do it for you). Similarly, there is no need to follow nasty, argumentative people, even if they follow you, just unfollow them. Don’t get dragged into pointless fights over nothing, that’s what facebook is for. Life is too short for negativity. You can engage with people who disagree with you and you with them, without negativity, and this can lead to some great discussions.

#FF, is a good opportunity to thank people for retweets and mentions through the week, or someone who provided an answer to a question. Some people just list everyone they know, or it seems like it, but people who interact a lot, may have a lot of people to give respect to

* RT; don’t steal. Related to politeness RT rather than steal, or include a [via @Someone ] or MT (modified tweet) or V @Someone, if it is basically the same as another persons tweet. However, sometimes people will ask for a RT on their tweets, example, Plz RT (please retweet), if you do oblige, it is fine to remove the request if you do. For alerts such as rescue or missing child it is acceptable, but for someone just promoting their own blogs, and they repost the same links repeatedly, it can get repetitive.

* Quality not quantity. It is not about the number of followers, but do you achieve what you want with being on twitter. Do you disseminate information, learn about new causes, find petitions that need signing, finding out how you can help a campaign. Or are you following too many people that the issues, people and causes that are important to you get lost in the clutter. Like facebook, Twitter also is just a tool. A small group of followers who have a positive effect on your life is better than a million followers or following a million people and doing nothing with it, and drag you down with time wasting and pettiness.

* Interact with people, find the balance that best suits you between tweeting too much and too little. Talk to people, if you want. Offer something more than inspirational quotes and the same headlines and ads that everyone else does.

* Lists, use lists. Lists can be public or private, use private for family and real world friends if you want to keep that part of your life separate. Give lists good names, no one wants to see themselves listed as “annoying and boring” instead, name the list something like “must visit” (for example, you don’t want to see them in your feed, as they tweet a lot of repeat headlines or on topics that don’t interest you most of the time, but you don’t want to lose them, they occasionally have brilliant things or you are reciprocating, so you will visit them on their page).

If you have your lists set up, it only takes seconds to add new people you follow to a list. It makes people easier to find, when you get thousands of people that you are following. See how other people have someone listed, it may give you an idea of what they tweet about, or it might reflect how someone sees them.

When your feed is cluttered, or you have no time, go to the lists you want to read and filter your feed that way. Don’t crowd your list, or you may miss seeing the things that you really want to, prune who you follow as your interests change, or move them to a different list.

One possible list is for tools, include accounts such as official twitter support, spam watch, twitter cleaner, and other accounts that relate to technology support and online censorship and privacy issues (oh you mean facebook have changed their privacy settings – again).

If you follow people for short term, for example, there has been a disaster in a part of the world you’re not normally interested in, wars, invasions, wildfires, elections or celebrity scandal, and you follow people for that reason, put them in a separate list, makes it easier to unfollow them later if you choose to.

* Follow back or not. It is a feature of twitter, unlike facebook, there is no automatic reciprocation of following. People can choose to follow you, they don’t need your permission (unless you have a private account) and you don’t have to follow them back. And just as random people can follow you, You can follow someone, there is no requirement they follow you either. However, since it is also possible to list people you don’t follow, it is also possible to talk to people you don’t follow and who don’t follow you, the same way you talk to others @TheirName). It is also possible to hide people from your feed that you do follow. So, it is possible to talk to and respond to people, without the need to follow them.

Do you follow back everyone or follow selectively. Some people who may at first seem like spambots with no profiles, turn out to post some great tweets. One theory is follow everyone, except the spammers, then unfollow those you don’t like. Unlike with facebook, there is no automatic follow back, which can be a good thing, your tastes and interests vary and don’t have to match those who you follow.

#hashtags with your community, the use of hashtags do more than just highlight key words. While it does act much like a tag applied to a blog, it can also identify communities that evolve. For example, the tags #tcot and #p2 don’t convey information in themselves, but to a self identified member of that community, it makes sense. The ‘top conservatives of twitter’ and their ideological opponents the ‘progressives’. Searches find search terms with or without the # added, so it does more than just label your tweet for searches, it makes a statement of what you want readers to know about that. Use the same tags that others use for a topic, it will be found easier. For trending topics, the longer the tag is used, the more likely it is to be taken over by spambots.

However, since searches do find the term, regardless of whether it has the #symbol attached or not, some people see the tag as a way to interact, you want it to be found. A couple of users I talked to about this, said it is like an invitation to a twitter party, meaning, conversations flow, you can jump in or out, talk to strangers, that #symbol is your way of saying, I’m joining the party, I’m putting my opinions out there. Or in the case of disasters, it is a way of saying, here is a specific use of the word, rather than just a regular meaning.

Trending topics at the moment are for a select few cities and countries or the rest of the world combines as ‘worldwide’. http://trendsmap.com/ can show you what is trending in your part of the world, or where a particular topic is trending, not extensive but covers places not yet in twitters TT’s. If gives you a feed of that topic, or the most popular people posting on that topic. You can watch without joining twitter.

You can set up a search in a new tab through twitter or column in desktop applications. Searching for words such as ‘vegan’ or ‘AnimalRights’ and you can keep up with what is going on, without needing to follow people who write on that topic, or find people who talk about what you’re interested in (but not every use of the word is what you want, it could be anti-vegan or robots).

* Avoid sounding like spambots. Accounts can be suspended as with facebook. So take care of your account, especially if you build up a name and reputation. Warning signs of spambots (those to try to avoid), include 6000 followers and 0 tweets, repeating the same news headlines, only tweeting other peoples tweets and never interacting, using as many trending topics in one tweet with “I’m lonely tonight” thrown in, repeating the same link over and over especially in short url so you have no idea where it links to, repeating everyone else’s #FF (follow friday) in the hopes you will reciprocate, repeating the same link to a book or program they are trying to sell, trying to sell something with every tweet, (the really good professionals throw in some real tweets, inspirational quotes, interact with other, links to other than their own blog and the tweets that you Know are a sales pitch, you don’t really notice

* Don’t send anyone you don’t know any money, particular for human rights issues or animals, it’s easy to want to feel like your making a difference. If it is official cause or issue, find a group in your home town and donate to them, as heart breaking as it is, we can’t save every animal, instead of sending money to the other side of the world, donate to a local no-kill shelter or donate to the official charity in your city, but at least you can see where the money goes. Of course animal people are smart enough to research any organisation that is asking for money, to make sure they are legitimate first before donating.

* Verified accounts, for celebrities, world leaders and organisations, at the moment it seems verification is particularly for US or UK account, not so much in the rest of the world. If it is not a Verified account, it does not mean that it not an official account it may be the celebrity is a local celebrity. At the moment however, if it is a big name US celebrity, and they don’t have a verified account, there is a good chance it is not official.

Although, there is fun to be had with parody accounts, people calling themselves CelebFan, NotTheRealCeleb, FakeCeleb, FakeCompany, or in the case of openly gay celebrities, MrsCeleb. Or someone is using a television characters name, the good ones, soon attract others to play the rest of the cast, and tweet about topics that you would expect from that television character, done as a homage, tribute or parody, and these Non Official accounts can be as good as the real thing. As long as someone is upfront they aren’t the real celebrity, what is the problem.

* People who do nothing but provide links to their own blog, but don’t say it is their blog, or just post links with no description can clutter up a twitter feed. Saying something like “men are from Mars, women are from Venus, what do you think?” can drive traffic to your blog, and encourage people to comment, is more engaging than simply http://bit.ly/9he7ho, which doesn’t exactly say what it is people are going to get out of clicking. However, if someone wants to just post links, then perhaps, using the longer url, and readers can see for themselves what the page is about, may be more helpful.

* People repeating headlines or links, can get more views if they add a few words about it, if it is a youtube clip, say why, is it funny, heartbreaking, relevant, outrageous. If you want to motivate people to do something more than just scan the headlines as the tweets roll down their page, offering something other than just links may help do that, give people a reason to click.

* Use the tools provided:
star on the top right of a tweet, “favorites” to bookmark a particular tweet, you wish to return to later
reply when you are responding to a particular person or discussion; and
retweet when you want to tweet is to your followers (reply and retweet serve two different purposes, reply is best for discussions with a particular person, or use DM private message)

* Consider how many news organisations you follow. Too many and you will have nothing but news headlines. If there is a breaking issue in the animal rights world, plenty of people you follow will mention it.

Like all media strategies, twitter can be an effective tool for activists, especially, if you know what you want to get out of it. Twitter participation is easy. However, that participation can be in an inverse relationship to effective activism. It does not matter if its a business, social marketer, or “fake” celebrity, what matters is you control what you see and who sees you, you can be public or private, you can use it a lot or a little.

Um, yep, I can see how you can think tweeting is exactly just like the same as being “on the frontlines” too.

I did some research (looked up WIKI) for the meaning of “front line” and this is what it said:

Frontline… is a term used by most armed force services worldwide. It is a battlespace control measure that designates the forward-most friendly and hostile forces that are presently on the battlefield during an armed conflict or war; whether it be regular infantry or reconnaissance. It can also identify the forward location of covering and screening forceshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_line

While I don’t doubt that tweeters are involved in “direct action”, I don’t see what “hostile forces” or “armed conflict” or “war” they are encountering.

And, to be fair, to this person whose name I blacked out, I am not really attacking them, their comment just made me laugh. How do you compare a group like Biteback, to someone who “promotes veganism”? Although, they probably do more than just tweet and retweet. And, promoting veganism, is a good thing, I’m not knocking their efforts, just their comparison to Biteback. And, if someone did the same to me, they could probably find things that can be taken out of context and pick it apart…. oh wait, they have….

H$U$ (Human Society of United States) recently had a petition against “cruel factory farms“, when I replied to their tweet, “how about: ending all factory farms?”. To say that there are cruel factory farms, implies that there are factory farms that are not. All factory farms are cruel, all farms are cruel, any use of animals for any reason is exploitation and cruelty.

The comments didn’t stop for days, accusing me of being a ‘welfarist’, ‘supporting animal abuse’, being an ‘abuse enabler’, ‘supporting farming’… wow, people, back off. Attacking other vegans, and with such vitriol and viciousness, and then claim to be about peace is just bizarre and does not do anything to promote the vegan message.

When using social network sites, particularly Twitter, be careful what you say, someone is always reading, and usually not the people you expect.